What happened to honesty?

G

GP44

Member
We were at a mall in Springfield Missouri several years ago.
My wife got sick and went to the restroom and I sat at a nearby table in the food court.
When she came out of the hallway from the restroom I got up and walked her out to the car in the parking lot.
As soon as we got to the car I realized that I had left my cell phone laying on that table in the food court so I told my wife that if I wasn’t back in ten minutes to call my phone.
There were six teenage boys sitting at that table when I went back in and I asked them if they had seen a phone that was left on the table.
“No” as I looked at each one of them. Starting with what looked like would be the biggest and what would be more of a leader.
“No If I had seen it I would tell you”
Same way down the line “ Me neither”
So I told them that my wife was going to call my phone and when she does I will know that it is my phone.
I had nearly given up on my wife’s call when all of a sudden I heard the ring tone - One of Marty Robbin’s gun fighter songs.
By this time these punks knew I meant business and one of them reached down and took his foot off of my phone and they passed it down the line to me.
I was so angry that I was lucky that I wasn’t thrown out of the mall for all of the names I yelled at these rotten little turds.
Yes! Even worse than that.
I just couldn’t imagine somebody not giving me back my phone after I told them that I walked my sick wife to the car.
I bought a phone case that clips on to my belt after that so there is little chance that I will ever leave it again.
 

StarSong said:
Sad to say, thievery is nothing new.
Click to expand...

There it is.

There was the time in the Air Force when I had just gotten off of a 3-11 shift at Cam Rahn and I went to take a shower before bed. The shower room was completely empty. So I took off my father's watch and layed it down under a towel and figured it would be OK while I went in and took a short shower. It wasn't. When I got out I lifted up the towell and the watch was gone.

Then there was the time I was a student at Florida State aand I was in the library doing research for a paper. There was nobody else around so I left my Texas Instruments calculator that I had paid $60 bucks that I couldn't afford on the table while I went back into the stacks for 5 minutes to look for another reference book and when I got back there was still no one else around but neither was my calculator.

Then there was the time by buddy and I drove all the way accross Florida from Largo to St. Augustine beach so we could surf some ocean waves instead of the Gulf. That's the Gulf of Mexico by the way. So we put our wallets in the trunk and I hid the car keys under a towell on the beach while we went out surfing.

When we got back the keys were still there but some dude came up to us a said that while we were gone someone had taken our keys, gone up to our car and opened the truck and took something out. At least they had been nice enough to then go back and put my keys under the towell where I had left them. And when I opened the trunk our wallets were there too. But all our cash was gone. So we were flat broke 170 miles from home and had to go up and down the beach pan handling until we had collected enough change to buy enough gas to get back.

There are other instances when I got ripped off too but I think I've made my point that there have always been thieves around.



 
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It was smart of you to have your wife ring your phone. Brave of you to confront the teenagers. I am glad that you got your phone back.
I think our worst episode was a few years back. We moved from NW Florida to Central Florida for my husband's work. We sold our house rapidly to a couple that seemed quite friendly. We felt they got a bargain because we had to relocate quite rapidly and we left a lot of things for them.
A short while after moving in our new house, my husband experienced troubles with his work computer. We sent it out of state to his work IT Dept. so they could fix it. It normally took them about two days to take care of the problem and they would send it back to us via Fed Ex.
The computer did not make it back! After a few phone calls to his company, we discovered that they had received our change of address but the company warehouse (in charge of delivery) had not made the adjustment and had sent the computer to our old address. My husband got in touch with the new owners who indeed had received the computer but obviously had no desire to send it to us. At the end, they finally did and my husband was back on track!
 
GP44 said:
We were at a mall in Springfield Missouri several years ago.
My wife got sick and went to the restroom and I sat at a nearby table in the food court.
When she came out of the hallway from the restroom I got up and walked her out to the car in the parking lot.
As soon as we got to the car I realized that I had left my cell phone laying on that table in the food court so I told my wife that if I wasn’t back in ten minutes to call my phone.
There were six teenage boys sitting at that table when I went back in and I asked them if they had seen a phone that was left on the table.
“No” as I looked at each one of them. Starting with what looked like would be the biggest and what would be more of a leader.
“No If I had seen it I would tell you”
Same way down the line “ Me neither”
So I told them that my wife was going to call my phone and when she does I will know that it is my phone.
I had nearly given up on my wife’s call when all of a sudden I heard the ring tone - One of Marty Robbin’s gun fighter songs.
By this time these punks knew I meant business and one of them reached down and took his foot off of my phone and they passed it down the line to me.
I was so angry that I was lucky that I wasn’t thrown out of the mall for all of the names I yelled at these rotten little turds.
Yes! Even worse than that.
I just couldn’t imagine somebody not giving me back my phone after I told them that I walked my sick wife to the car.
I bought a phone case that clips on to my belt after that so there is little chance that I will ever leave it again.
Click to expand...
these days you wouldn't even have to leave the phone anywhere , phone muggers ride up on bikes onto the pavements and grab the phone out of your hand ..

Sad as it is...no.. more than sad, heartbreaking... this is a different world to the one we grew up in....
 
Back a good few years ago, I was attending conference in Athens, Greece. The day before leaving home, I bought myself a fancy - then new - flip phone. Very cool!

Cutting a long story short, I owned that phone for two days. One of those days was the travel there, then one day at the conference itself. It was stolen on that second day. Sh** happens. :(

Dishonesty has always been a thing. This is even more true in bad economical times. The trouble with haves and have not's is that at a certain point the have not's decide to just take what they want. Add in a serious step backward in our society (which I won't go into here), and you have a serious problem.
 
My parents and we four girls were on our annual cross country trip from Tucson, AZ to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the summer of 1966. We stopped for a pit stop at a rest stop. While in the restroom, my mother found a women's wallet on the floor of the restroom. The wallet had more than $1,000 in cash, some credit cards, pictures and a Texas driver's license.

When we got to Maryland my mother mailed it, insured, to the owner in Texas.

A month or so later after we'd gotten home from vacation, there was a box waiting at the post office for my Mother.

In it was the most beautiful crystal and 22 karat gold engraved Culver Valencia high ball set. Complete with pitcher, six glasses and a glass/gold stirring rod and a matching server tray. It was just gorgeous. I'd never SEEN such a beautiful thing. It was a thank you gift from the lady who lost her wallet, in gratefulness for my mother's honesty.

My mother placed it on the platter with the set in a prominent place in our home for the rest of her life.

I never realized why I thought that set so lovely until today: the good it represented.
 
Just a week ago we did shopping in our local Aldi and when hubs took the trolly back to the racks he noticed a phone / purse in a trolly , so he took it into Aldi and gave it to the manager who was on a checkout,

DH said he thanked him several times for his honesty, as did customers who were in the line.

( the Aldi is a stand alone shop , other food shops are driving distance away )
 
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Trade said:
There it is.

There was the time in the Air Force when I had just gotten off of a 3-11 shift at Cam Rahn and I went to take a shower before bed. The shower room was completely empty. So I took off my father's watch and layed it down under a towel and figured it would be OK while I went in and took a short shower. It wasn't. When I got out I lifted up the towell and the watch was gone.

Then there was the time I was a student at Florida State aand I was in the library doing research for a paper. There was nobody else around so I left my Texas Instruments calculator that I had paid $60 bucks that I couldn't afford on the table while I went back into the stacks for 5 minutes to look for another reference book and when I got back there was still no one else around but neither was my calculator.

Then there was the time by buddy and I drove all the way accross Florida from Largo to St. Augustine beach so we could surf some ocean waves instead of the Gulf. That's the Gulf of Mexico by the way. So we put our wallets in the trunk and I hid the car keys under a towell on the beach while we went out surfing.

When we got back the keys were still there but some dude came up to us a said that while we were gone someone had taken our keys, gone up to our car and opened the truck and took something out. At least they had been nice enough to then go back and put my keys under the towell where I had left them. And when I opened the trunk our wallets were there too. But all our cash was gone. So we were flat broke 170 miles from home and had to go up and down the beach pan handling until we had collected enough change to buy enough gas to get back.

There are other instances when I got ripped off too but I think I've made my point that there have always been thieves around.
Click to expand...
'' So we put our wallets in the trunk and I hid the car keys under a towell''

Ahhh the standard " hide " keys under towel or in sneakers.
 
You can put a 'find my phone' thing on your phone - and then from someone else's phone, you can find where your phone is - so in OP situation even if the thieves had been smarter and had the volume turned off, it would still tell you your phone was there.

Ive used it a couple of times - phone wasn't stolen, but I left it at work, for example.
 
As a teen, my daughter and her friend, found a wallet with $500.00 cash in it. There was a photo of a teen in the wallet, and other I.D. They walked to the address and gave the wallet back to the girl. There was a "thank you", but, no reward. That was okay with them. I was very proud of them for their honesty.
 
Remy said:
I don't get it either. I found just a flip phone in a cart in the parking lot at WINCO Foods. I took it into the store.
Click to expand...

A couple of days ago I found some ones Capitol one credit card in the parking lot of Walmart and I turned it in to the store. In the 10 years that I have been walking on the nature trail I have found 2 sets of keys, a drivers license, and a Lowes gift card. I turned all those in. I also found a debit card outside of my credit union and I turned that in. I found a dime in the Walmart Parking lot a few days ago too. I kept that.
 
Kadee said:
Just a week ago we did shopping in our local Aldi and when hubs took the trolly back to the racks he noticed a phone / purse in a trolly , so he took it into Aldi and gave it to the manager who was on a checkout,

DH said he thanked him several times for his honesty ( the Aldi is a stand alone shop , other food shops are driving distance away )
Click to expand...
Dillemma: lt was many years ago that l was at our largest mall and l was standing up finishing a sandwich next to a group of guys who were seated around a wall of bricks around a large potted plant. l just happend to look down at one of the unoccupied seats on the wall when l spyed a phone lying there by itself. l yelled to the guys to ask if it belongs to one of them.

Just then another guy walked up and said he knows who the phone belongs to and would take it to him. None of the other guys
said anything. What was l to do? l studied the guy who for how he looked and how he was dressed and decided to believe
him and not allow preconceived opinions to make my decision for me.

Looking back, l probably made a mistake. But in what way and how would l do differently today? l have unfortunately have become a lot more skeptical of the world. A conscience should be your guide but it can also be be a pest to hang around you for years.
 
I used to have this terrible habit when pumping gas that could have cost me big.
I would accidentally pull TWO credit or debit cards (stuck together) out of my wallet before getting out of my truck to pump and pay for gas. Then I would accidentally drop the second card because I didn't even realized there was a second card in my hand.

That happened three times before I finally figured out what was happening; all three times someone at a gas station returned the card.

To fix the issue, I bought one of those credit card holders that have dividers and hold about six cards separated by a divider, and that stopped my problem.
 
DebraMae said:
Be careful when you are in the hospital. The last time I was there my phone almost walked out with the lady who changes the sheets. I am positive that I had left it on my bedside table.
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when I was in hospital 2 weeks ago... they stressed not to bring anything in of value... well of course one of the most valuable things I have is my iphone..and I had no choice, I had to take it with me.... and fortunately I didn't get to stay overnight as planned, so my phone was still with me when I came home..
 
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NotCompSavy said:
'' So we put our wallets in the trunk and I hid the car keys under a towell''

Ahhh the standard " hide " keys under towel or in sneakers.
Click to expand...
I have a home 10 minutes from the beach in Spain. The Spanish authorities are always telling people to lock their valuable in the boot of the car when going to the beach ..

One day as I sat on a bench waiting for someone..I watched as cars pulled in to the beach car park which was situated right next to a multistorey block of flats.. and the people locked their things in the boot.. after taking their towels and chairs out...

They had to walk perhaps 200 yards across the boardwalk to get to the sands.. and in that time, thieves who had been watching from a flat above the car park.. raced down, smashed the rear window and grabbed the handbags out of it.. and I could still see the owners of the car, hadn't even reached the sands yet..

Transpires at this particular beach car park.. these thieves rented apartments just to be able to watch where drivers stowed their valuables.. and dash down , and in 2 minutes they'd broken in and gone again...
 

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